


Reflections on the Normandy

by CorporalSmokey



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Character of Color, Lesbians in Space, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, POV First Person, POV Lesbian Character, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Mass Effect 3, Recreational Drug Use, References to Drugs, Slow Romance, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 14:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30090747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorporalSmokey/pseuds/CorporalSmokey
Summary: When people ask me how I ended up on the Normandy with Commander Shepard, I tell them that it started with a dead woman in my bed, vomit, broken glass, drugs, and my door being kicked off its hinges. They tend to clear off pretty quickly after that, but all of it is, unfortunately, true. So, I'm going to put the entire, messy story of my time with Shepard out there. Maybe people will stop asking me about it.She never did pay me back for the door, come to think about it.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Jack | Subject Zero/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 3





	Reflections on the Normandy

Sometimes, I wonder what would life have been like if I hadn't joined the Normandy. It's a stupid question, but it comes back. Usually it's when the amp's giving me insomnia again. Weird how your head does that, right? Just, picks a random memory, and spins it out. Before you know it, you've spent three hours wondering if that time you skipped school is the reason your life got so fucked up. Like I said, stupid questions; but signing on with the Normandy – that one always comes back.

When it does, I just stare at the ceiling, thinking, playing it all out. I remember Thane once telling me that he could remember everything, down to the smallest details. I don't think I could live with that – remembering everything, questioning it, agonising over it. It's bad enough remembering the Normandy, and the people on it; never mind the things I want to forget.

Thane. Fuck. There's a name I haven't thought about for a while.

Anyway, Dr. T'Phera said that maybe I should write everything down. Make a memoir or something. She thinks I "may have some healing to go through." Maybe to do with something that happened when I was on the Normandy. Something like that. She's always coming out with shit like that. I don't know. She asks me about it all the time, how I felt about it all – that fucking suicide mission; the Collectors; the Reapers; the war.

And I just sit there, and I say: "I feel fine."

I mean, what else am I supposed to say? What do you say to someone that wasn't there, who wouldn't fucking get it? People died – people close to me; people I considered family fucking died right in front of me. But she gets to sit there, poking, prodding, trying to get me to open up – like I'm a fucking clam or something.

And then she asks that fucking bullshit question, every single time: "How did that make you feel, Kalla?"

What the fuck do you even say to that? How do you separate that ball of emotions when you watch someone die in front of you? The thought of it makes me feel sick, like I'm going to just vomit up everything – all the words that run through my mind when I think about those moments; when Doctor Fucking T'Phera brings them back up.

So, I sit there, and I say: "I felt fine."

And then she'll say something like: "He was your comrade – a friend. Surely you didn't just feel 'fine' about it?"

That just digs the knife in deeper. The question just hangs in the air. I can feel the anger bubbling up – the hurt, the pain. The loss. That fucking cocktail of rage and sadness and lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about it; thinking about the times when they were still alive, and when they died.

I'm avoiding it. Dr. T'Phera says I do that – get angry, jump to something else, change the topic. She thinks I'm brushing over the details of things I don't want to think about. Maybe she's right. I don't know. Anyway, I'm fucking doing this thing, so here goes fuck-all: Kalla Khaffeiri's In-Depth-Fucking-Bullshit-Therapy Memoir.

Jack suggested it. It's a temporary title.

My part of the story starts on Omega. I love Omega; I used to hang out there between merc jobs. Every place has a beat, a rhythm. You feel it everywhere. It's in the way people talk, move, or hold themselves. It's the whole atmosphere. Omega is dark and gritty and chaotic; but it has this strange undercurrent of order. You feel it the most in Afterlife: that club is the pulsing heart of Omega.

When I first met Shepard, I still had the remnants of Afterlife on me. I also had a dead woman in my bed. It took me a while to realise that; she was still warm when I woke. Our skin was washed red in the half-light – mine slightly darker than hers. Her eyes were closed, lips slightly parted, as if she were about to kiss me. Strands of her hair, loosened from the stiff mohawk by sweat, lay gently on her cheeks. Small details – tiny things I remember; maybe because I missed the fact that she wasn't breathing.

I didn't think about any of that, though. I had a club-mix kick drum pounding in my head. Withdrawal, hangover, the amp, I didn't care; I just wanted another hit of whatever drug I was favouring at the time. I think it was hallex - that was always a constant around that time – but at that point, I'd settle for anything.

I shifted her head off of my shoulder, and extricated my numb limbs from her body. Every movement felt slow and clumsy. My muscles ached. I heard discarded clothes sliding off the bed and slumping onto the floor; alongside the rattle and clatter of loose pills, bottles, cans, and inhalers. Every sound felt impossibly loud in the silence, and was quickly followed with another stab of pain in my head.

It took a couple of minutes for the smell to hit me; about the same time I'd managed to sit myself up. The stale, yeasty stink of alcohol, with the overly-sweet undercurrent of cooked-up drugs. Maybe we smoked something – I don't remember much of the night before. I felt my stomach churning, tasted bile in my throat. My head was so heavy. It just sank down, down, down, until it was between my knees. Then, I fucking chucked up everything in my stomach.

It took a while; it was mostly liquid, but I was coughing, spluttering, choking. I could barely see anything; my eyes were streaming. My sinuses were burning – it must have started coming out of my nose at some point, I don't remember it too well. Puke and snot clung, warm and sticky, around my mouth. I felt it splattering my feet and legs.

I didn't care; I wanted a hit. The headache was becoming unbearable; my brain seemed determined to blow its fucking way out of my skull. I somehow managed to force myself up onto my feet, but my legs had no strength in them. I just slid down onto the floor, into the dark, red-tinted pool I'd just chucked up.

My legs were no use; my knees just slid and skidded whenever I tried to push myself up. So, I crawled forwards, using the little energy and strength in my arms to pull me along. Lukewarm vomit coated my skin as I dragged my way along the floor. I must have looked like some kind of fucking worm, squirming and writhing down there, legs flailing behind me and splashing vomit on the bed, walls – probably the ceiling too.

Instinct was driving me; I knew I'd find something if I just kept going forwards. I clawed blindly along the floor, through the mess of drug paraphernalia, the now-sodden clothes. I was nearly at the end of the bed. I swept aside a pair of underwear and a bra I vaguely recognised as mine. Pain blossomed in my hand, sharp, stinging. I gasped, flexed my hand out of instinct, and the pain magnified. It felt like a white-hot rod had been shoved between my fingers. The migraine was getting worse; thundering, hammering at my skull. It was a fucking club-mix on overdrive in there.

I let my head fall down. The pool was cool now, comforting. The migraine eased slightly; the pain in my hand beat in time with it, like a sharp snare. I wanted to just curl up and stay there; but I needed another hit. I clumsily pulled my hand back, trying to look through half-closed eyes at whatever was lodged in it.

Glinting in the dusky crimson light, I saw a long needle jutting out from between my first and second fingers. The vial at the other end was shattered. The fragile peaks and valleys of glass were still stained with whatever had been inside it. I don't remember what it was – not specifically, anyway. It was something that gave me a buzz; that was good enough for me back then. Blood oozed out from around the needle.

I don't know how long it took me to pull that needle out. It was probably a few minutes – ten at most – but it didn't feel like that at the time. Every millimetre seemed to take an hour; and I was so fucking hungover that I couldn't move my hands properly. It was like trying to open a door with fucking steak for hands. With each twitch, I felt the needle slicing around inside my hand. The blood wasn't just oozing now; I'd worked the needle around, opened up the wound. I heard the slow drip of it splattering on the floor.

If I was clean and sober, the broken vial probably would have tipped me off. Back then though, I was a burned-out addict just needing a hit. I just wanted the pain in my head to stop. So, I crawled over broken glass to find something, anything, that would help. My hand was slippery with blood and slid all over the floor, and more than once, I lost balance and went crashing down onto the floor. I felt the glass grinding into my skin, felt them dangling from my body as I kept moving.

I'd finally seen the fucking light at the end of this shitty – well, more accurately, vomity and bloody – tunnel. The red light seemed to glow around the bottle of pills. I didn't know what they were at the time – as if I was going to be fucking picky at that point – but I'd guess, based on the high I got, they were carsicaine: painkillers usually strong enough to level a krogan.

The bottle was open, tipped over on the floor. The thin pills avalanched out of the neck. I licked my cracked, dry lips – I actually fucking licked my lips. I didn't even care about my hands, knees, body; I dragged myself forwards with a surge of energy. My bloody hand skidded across the floor, I hit the floor, pain flared across my body, broken glass stabbed and punctured my skin. But I was within reach.

I stretched out a bloody hand, seized a handful of pills, and forced them into my mouth. They went down with the acidic, sour, metallic mix of blood and puke. I remember something scratching at my throat; some fragments of glass must have down too. I don't know how many I took. I don't want to know. I remember this immense relief, like a huge weight had just been lifted off of me. It was just this huge release. I think I cried – it was tears, blood, or puke; maybe all of them. Something wet was dripping down my face.

My heart was beating faster, my breathing was getting shallower, my vision narrowing, clouding, going almost black. The pills were kicking in. Then, it all slowed down – my breathing, my heart, everything. The migraine receded, then disappeared entirely. The pain in my hands, knees, my body, it just all slipped away. The high swept through my body. My whole body felt numb. In the broken glass, vomit, blood, snot – whatever the fuck else was on me, and on that floor – I felt as if I'd been purged of all the shit inside me. The pain was gone; and I was finally at peace.

That's how Shepard found me. I wasn't particularly lucid at the time – just drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember images: boots on the floor; a hand that didn't belong to me closing over the bottle of pills. Pills right by my mouth. I remember random things – broken glass, pills, inhalers, red light, white light, noises, voices. Muddy, blurry pictures; faded snapshots of an old life.

My head is hurting just trying to put it all back together. It's like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces and no fucking picture to work from. I didn't realise how bad it was back then – how bad I was, let's be honest. Writing it out, reliving it. I can feel the shame, the disgust at what I was like; but I can feel myself wanting a high. That scares me more than any fucking Reaper ever did. I need to move on from this. I think I need to talk it out with someone - Garrus, Tali, Jack. Anyone. I'll even take Dr. T'Phera right now.

I can't tell you how long I lay on that floor. Time loses all cohesion when you're an addict. It stops being linear. It's continuous cycles of being hungover and being high; lucidity and delirium. Living on a space station is extremely conducive to that kind of lifestyle – there's no sun, no 'real' time. The next time I was completely lucid, when I'd finally ridden out the high, there were three heavily-armed people standing in my fucking bedroom.

Someone had sat me up against a wall, and covered me with a sheet. They were standing over the girl on the bed. I remember wondering why she hadn't moved. She looked exactly as she had when I'd crawled out of bed. Someone realised that I'd finally stirred, the blurred approximation of a person strode over. Glass crunched under armoured boots.

"Kalla Khaffeiri?"

Shepard's voice was too loud; and I flinched. She crouched down in front of me. Her face slid in and out of focus.

"Yeah. Who the fuck are you?"

"Your new employers."

It was a male voice – Jacob, I later learned.

My head was spinning. My joints ached as I shifted under the sheet. I lay my head back against the wall, stared at the ceiling. It was easier; there was less to focus on there. No people, no chaos, no drugs; just bland pre-fab metal, white paint flaking away in places.

"Anyone got a cigarette?" I said.

My throat was dry, and my voice croaked out. Movement – footsteps.

"Here," Shepard said.

I slowly brought my head down, took the proffered packet and lighter, and slid one out. It took me a couple of attempts to light it. The flint scraped my thumb, sparks danced, then the flame leapt into life. I took a deep drag on the cigarette. My head cleared a little. Thinking was easier.

"Thanks," I said. "So, who the fuck are you?"

"Jane Shepard. This is Miranda Lawson, and Jacob Taylor."

I tilted my head, and waved a hand weakly in their direction. Neither of them waved back. Miranda was looking around the room, disgust evident on her face. Jacob just glared at me, arms folded.

"We have a contract with you," Shepard said.

I'm not sure if she was trying to remind me, or convince herself that I really was the person Cerberus had paid for.

"You do?"

I didn't remember any contract with Cerberus; although, I could barely remember my own name at the time, so it's no real surprise. Smoke drifted up between Shepard and I, pooling around the ceiling, hanging in the air. There was an awkward, pregnant pause.

"Are we sure we have the right place?" Jacob said.

"We have the right place," Miranda said, just audible enough for me to hear.

"And the right person?"

"Jacob –"

"You wanted Kalla Khaffeiri, right?" I said.

They looked at me, as if suddenly remembering I was there – or at least, remembering that I was conscious. I took another long drag on the cigarette. The tip blazed in the murky light. Ash tumbled onto the sheet covering me. Shepard was watching me intently - trying to make up her mind, I guess.

"We wanted the person in the dossier," Jacob said. "Frankly, you're not it."

I laughed. It caught in my dry, aching throat, and turned into a hacking cough. My eyes watered. I smiled up at Jacob, Shepard, Miranda.

"What I do in my spare time is my business," I said. "I'm a professional."

"Sure looks like it," Jacob said.

"You want a fucking go?" I snapped at him.

I could feel my anger burning through the fog of the high. I threw the cigarette to one side, where it landed, smouldering, in a corner. Biotic energy surged through my body. I pushed myself up off the floor, the sheet sliding off me, purple energy flickering across my naked skin. My amp might give me migraines so bad I can hardly breathe, but fuck, it makes me powerful. I could have thrown Jacob around that room like a fucking ragdoll – put him through the ceiling without even breaking a sweat.

I'd still quite like to do that, come to think of it.

Jacob's face twisted into a sneer. "You want to do this now, or do you need another hit of something first?"

"That's enough, Jacob," Shepard said. She turned back to me. "We'll still take you on. But we'll need to have a discussion about your habits."

"Like I said, I'm a professional," I said. I stooped, and picked up the cigarette I'd thrown away. I pulled on it, trying to coax the ember back to life. "What I do in my own time – that's my business."

"We've made an investment in you, Kalla; a significant one," Miranda said. "We'd like to make sure we actually see a return on that investment."

I shrugged. "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"You are. And we'd like to keep it that way."

"We don't want you ending up like your friend there," Jacob said, nodding to the girl in the bed.

I'd completely forgotten about her. The stupor from the hangover, the rage. It clouded everything. I just stared at her. The cigarette slipped from my numb lips, sparked on the floor, and went dead. I didn't even know her name. I didn't know how long she'd been dead. I mean, fuck, she took everything I took – as far as I remember. It didn't make sense to me that she would have died. It didn't seem possible.

"We'll give you a few minutes to clear up here," Shepard said. Her tone had softened slightly. "Come find us at Dock 64 when you're ready."

I think Jacob said something snide, but I don't remember it. I just kept staring at the girl – the corpse, I guess, to be more accurate. Fuck. It shouldn't be this hard to write about. I've seen so many dead bodies, but this one is still gets to me. I don't know why. Maybe it's because, for some reason, I feel responsible. She took my gear. I gave it to her. But how the fuck was I supposed to know she couldn't handle it?

I don't fucking know. I don't know. Maybe I'll work it out, someday. Maybe. I don't know if that's just one of those people you don't get over. I think we all have someone like that. Maybe I'll keep doing this. I don't know if it's working. This is supposed to help me, but all I feel is shame. I just want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head, and never come out. I don't know. The others think it might help. I got a chance to talk with Tali and Jack, and they think I should push through with it. So, we'll see, I guess. Maybe I will keep going. What else can you do?


End file.
